Memorial to slain journalists disappears (05/27/01)

Memorial to slain journalists disappears

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - A damaged memorial to Heorhii Gongadze and other slain Ukrainian journalists disappeared on May 23, not fully two days after it was erected outside the offices of an independent news agency in Kyiv.

The monument had appeared in honor of what would have been Mr. Gongadze's 32 birthday and was one of several actions held on May 21 in memory of the late journalist, including the establishment of a small tent city before the Verkhovna Rada building by supporters of the Patriotic Party of Ukraine.

Few supporters of the Ukraine Without Kuchma oppositionist group, which commissioned the monument, had believed the four-foot-high black marble tombstone-like piece would stand in its place in the heart of Kyiv for very long. And it didn't, disappearing on the second morning after it was erected.

"This is a national disgrace," said Volodymyr Lutsenko, who was one of the co-organizers of the effort to honor eight Ukrainian journalists - first and foremost among them Mr. Gongadze - who the Ukraine Without Kuchma group believes were murdered because of what they wrote or reported about state authorities.

The disappearance and apparent death of Mr. Gongadze incited a national political crisis late last year after audiotapes surfaced in which President Leonid Kuchma and other high state officials appear to be planning the radio and Internet journalist's disappearance.

Mykhailo Batih, the president of the UNIAN news agency, explained that he had arrived in his office early on the morning of May 23 to find about 15 men in civilian clothes lifting the monument, which consists of a narrow foot-wide, four-foot high tombstone erected on a four-foot wide base, aboard a truck.

"The [Ukraine Without Kuchma] people had not approached us about putting the monument up," explained Mr. Batih. "We had very little contact with them on the matter, so I really did not know what to think when I saw the thing being hauled away."

In fact, one of the problems the oppositionist group encountered was resistance by law enforcement officials to the action, chiefly because the group had not obtained the required city permits.

On May 21, National Deputy Oleksander Moroz and members of his Socialist Party appeared, as they had previously announced, at the site of UNIAN with the monument, which had just arrived from the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, where it had been commissioned and constructed after extensive problems.

An initial obstacle was the refusal of the local state-run tombstone shop to accept the work with the explanation that it had no stone on hand, explained Mr. Lutsenko. So a private stonemason was retained. But on the night of May 19, after the stone had already been inscribed, vandals entered the stonemason's yard and damaged several burial markers, including the memorial, which was cracked in half.

Oppositionist leaders decided to transport and erect the damaged marker in Kyiv anyway. In the nation's capital, further problems occurred. First the group transporting the object was detained near the Socialist Party offices, where members were questioned about their plans for the memorial. At the UNIAN site, while no more than a couple of hundred supporters of the action, including representatives of the Sobor Party, the Republican Conservative Party and the UNA-UNSO radical group, looked on, the state militia officials told the group it was performing an illegal operation by putting down a monument on public property without a permit. But after several national deputies of the Socialist faction invoked their immunity from criminal prosecution and said the erection of the monument was their responsibility, the law enforcement officials relented.

After putting down the heavy base, volunteers used rubber cement and support rods to attach the two cracked pieces of the tombstone one atop the other. Socialist Party national deputies announced they would stand guard around-the-clock to make sure the monument was not removed, but less than two days later it was gone.

At first Ukraine Without Kuchma representatives said they believed the disappearance was the handiwork of the militia, but they now say they believe the 15 people who moved the monument were hired hands. Who hired them, however, no one can say, although Ukraine Without Kuchma leaders are speculating it was someone from the president's office.

Later the same day the state militia reported they had found the monument in a wooded area near the banks of the Dnipro River not far from the city center and would return the property to its owners.

Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko said he was ready to consider a proper, permanent place for the memorial - including its original site before the UNIAN offices - if it is properly erected.

* * *

On its base, the large, tombstone-like, black marble monument with a silhouette of Mr. Gongadze at the top, carries the inscription: "To the Slain Journalists of Ukraine: Fighters for the Truth."

Eight names of journalists who were found murdered are listed on the memorial along with their dates of death: Vadym Boiko, a Kyiv broadcast journalist, 1992; Sviatoslav Sosnovskyi, editor of the Sevastopol publication, Tavria, 1993; Volodymyr Ivanov, editor of the newspaper Slava Sevastopolia, 1995; Borys Derevianko, editor-in-chief of Vechirnia Odesa, 1996; Ihor Hryshetsky, correspondent for the Cherkasy publication Ukraina-Center, 1996; Volodymyr Baster, radio correspondent for the oblast government radio station, Kharkiv, 1997; Marianna Chorna, editor of the television network STB, 1999; and Mr. Gongadze, who was the publisher of the Internet newspaper Ukrainska Pravda. He disappeared on September 16, 2000.

The name of one other journalist who disappeared under mysterious circumstances was not inscribed on the black marble memorial because officially his death is listed as a suicide. Petro Shevchenko, the Luhansk correspondent for the newspaper Kievskie Viedomosti, was found hanging from a rafter of an abandoned building near the central train station in Kyiv in March 1997.

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